It’s the weekend, allegedly, so managed to get a little more done to this one. I was tempted to say I’m reasonably chuffed with the progress so far – but managed to resist (?) Not a great photo as the paint’s still too reflective, but you can see where it’s going. Used a limited palette so far – black, white, cadmium red and yellow ochre – not sure if I’ll be able to finish without adding some more colour though.

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This one was finished today (when I should really have been out painting from life). But I wanted to get it done and dusted, so…

There wasn’t an awful lot to do, in fact. I removed one of the telegraph poles, since they appeared to be too evenly spaced across the painting – a bad habit of mine, worked the left hand side buildings some more, added a couple of marker posts alongside the tracks (possibly a mistake, still not sure about those), and finally deepened the shadows of the buildings immediately next to the cement wagons.

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Had a call a couple of days ago for a (very) short notice show, starting on 15 May and running for a week at the Southfields Gallery. As I’m already showing in two others this coming week, I’m using this as a chance to exhibit some stuff that’s barely even dry yet! The gallery is about a two-minute walk from Southfields tube (District line) at 223 Wimbledon Park Road, SW18 5RH. I believe there will be a private view next Saturday evening, drop me a line if you’d like to go.

Apart from bubble-wrapping and delivering sundry paintings, it’s been a busy week in general, but I was determined to do a bit more to the latest piece, and here it is. Working from a photo I took in Arizona with my brother-in-law Dan last year.

Think I’m going to call this one finished. There’s always a temptation to keep tweaking this and that, and all of a sudden you realise that you’ve made a complete hash of it…

Reasonably pleased with it. As ever there are lots of things I would change / attempt to do better if I could start over again. But I think the drawing is ok, fairly accurate, and the background colour has worked out well; I’ve deliberately painted thin in places to allow it to show through. It’s also apparent in a couple of parts of the sky where I let the knife-work leave some of the ground showing through.

I’m still experimenting a lot to try and find the style that suits me best, but I think this is a move in the right direction. Let’s see where the next one takes me.